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The app is sponsored by Smirnoff for the first six months, and this seems to be a pretty good fit for both sponsor and publisher. Time Out offers Smirnoff access to it target 25-44 demographic, while Time Out is able to offer it for free download and extend its reach.

Also, compared with some other branded or sponsored apps, thanks to the fact that it is more useful day to day, it should have a longer lifespan, meaning more views / engagement for both sponsor and publisher.

More importantly, the app itself works well, with a good, easy to navigate, user interface, though it can be a little slow to load at times.

You can search by event and area, or it can take your current location via GPS and pinpoint local events and venues on the map for you:

At the bottom, you can select and deselect so it shows cinemas, theatre, gigs, restaurants and bars, while selecting the pins will give you further details, reviewer ratings etc:

The ‘Inspire Me’ feature is useful too, it provides ideas for current events, gigs, exhibitions etc to go to, and users can shake the app for a new selection if they don’t like what’s on offer, and touch the event for more info:

Conclusion

The app works well, and is very easy to use, and it can be useful if you are stuck for ideas for what to do, or else need to find a local bar or restaurant.

I still prefer the Yelp and Qype apps, as they both offer a greater level of detail. For instance, with Yelp, you can find and read reviews of nearby restaurants, see photos, details on the price range, as well as showing walking directions, something Time Out doesn’t do.

The Time Out app works better for recommendations though, thanks to the top ten picks list and ‘Inspire Me’ feature, while the sponsorship model seems to be a good way for publishers to cover the cost of app development.

Recommended

Yesterday I recommended Virgin Media’s broadband services to a colleague, who is moving flat and said he might leave Sky after a decade or so. He checked out Virgin Media’s combined broadband / TV / phone packages on offer and built a bundle worth more than £800 a year. Or so he thought.

The bundle page suggested that he’d be paying £70 a month, but the following page reduced this to £31 a month. So which was it to be? In seek of an answer he continued along the purchase path, only to be blocked by a form and no indication / confirmation of fees. Perplexed and frustrated, he swiftly dropped out and insisted that I try it for myself. And sure enough, I can see why potential customers would be confused by the way that one-off costs and monthly charges are communicated.

So here I’ll detail the various areas that are ripe for optimisation, to help Virgin Media improve the most important pages on its website.

Later today, Apple is expected to unveil what some believe may be its most important product ever: a tablet computing device.

The Apple tablet has been the subject of speculation for some time and in the lead up to Apple’s media event today, the buzz has hit a fever pitch as just about everyone is talking about it. Obviously, the press and blogosphere will have plenty of information to
feast on later, but I think the buzz about the Apple tablet is in and
of itself worth examining. Why? I think it tells us something about…

Search is indisputably the de facto way we navigate the internet. More and more, it’s creeping into our offline lives as well. As far back asa decade ago, studies were commissioned on how television viewers searched on-screen program guides, for example. Aspects of search, user experience and usability are now creeping into even more non-digital and mundane aspects of life. Even shopping for groceries.

Case-in-point: Self check-out machines have become a common sight at big box retailers, and recently they’ve started to appear in grocery stores as well. They afford both efficiency and cost-savings for retailers, right?

Not without the intervention of keyword and usability experts they don’t.